This invention relates to an improvement in a tag attacher for use in attaching tags to articles of commerce, such as clothes.
In order to attach a tag to a delicate article of commerce, such as expensive clothes, a method of attaching a tag to an article with a thread is employed, and tag fasteners of a synthetic resin, i.e. tag pins consisting of such a material are generally used for the purpose of attaching tags to a large number of articles efficiently.
This tag pin is obtained by molding a synthetic resin, such as nylon and polypropylene, the strength of which increases as it is stretched, into an integral tag pin body in which a flat head portion, a filament portion extending from an intermediate part of the head portion at right angles thereto, and a lateral bar portion fixed to an end of the filament portion so as to extend at right angles to the filament portion are arranged substantially in the shape of the letter "H". Such a tag pin is molded as a member of an integral tag pin unit, which consists of 30 to 100 tag pins implanted in a comb-like arrangement in one connecting bar, for the purpose of conveniently molding the tag pins and loading them into a tag attacher.
Such tag pins in a tag pin unit generally used and having head portions of, for example, around 1 mm in thickness are implanted at regular intervals of 2 mm in a connecting bar. In this tag unit in which tag pins are arranged at the mentioned intervals, a space of around 1 mm in width is formed between adjacent tag pins. Therefore, when a plurality of tag pin units are put together, for example, when a plurality of tag pin units are inserted into one box, or when a plurality of tag pin units are taken out of a box and practically used with the remaining unused tag pin units thereafter inserted into the original box, the tag pins in different tag pin units get one among another to be entangled.
So-called connected pins in which the head portions of tag pins are joined together by connectors which can be cut off when the tag pins are practically used have also been proposed as tag pins used to prevent such entanglement thereof. In a tag pin unit having tag pins thus formed, lateral bar portions are joined together by connecting bars, and head portions directly, so that this tag pin unit can be handled as a single block. Accordingly, the head portions of the tag pins in one tag pin unit do not get into the spaces among those of the tag pins in another when the tag pin units are put together, i.e., these tag pins are used conveniently without causing the entanglement thereof to occur.
A tag pin unit having tag pins formed at regular intervals of 2 mm as mentioned above is considerably long. Therefore, when the tag pin unit is loaded into a tag attacher, it is held in an easily shakable condition in a front upper portion of the machine. Consequently, various problems arise, for example, a tag pin unit obstructs a tag attaching operation, and the connecting bars projecting from the lower side of a front portion of a tag attacher catch an article of commerce.
In order to solve these problems, the applicant of this invention has developed and sold a so-called closely spaced tag pins the pitch of which is set to as small as around 1 mm. These closely spaced tag pins are formed much more compactly than tag pins of 2 mm pitch, and this enables the material cost to decrease, and a packaging material to be miniaturized. Such tag pins can be stored in large quantities in the same box, transported easily and handled excellently.
Various types of tag attachers to which such tag pins can be applied have been proposed, an example of which is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 61-35051. This tag attacher was developed for the purpose of driving, especially, closely spaced tag pins into articles, and have been used practically enjoying favorable reception from the users as a machine having such excellent functions that are not provided in a prior art tag attacher. However, this tag attacher has to transfer such delicate tag pin units that were not available before, so that a tag pin unit feed means has to use a large number of precision parts. Due to this disadvantageous point, the cost of manufacturing the tag attacher increases.
Concretely speaking, this tag pin unit feeding means constitutes a precision machine requiring various kinds of precision parts, such as a slide bar driven by an intermediate lever, a support plate moved pivotally by the slide bar, a locking claw-carrying feed member placed on the support plate, a detent for stopping tag pin units so that the tag pin units are not moved up in concert with a movement of the locking claw when the locking claw is moved up so as to engage the lateral bar of an upper tag pin in the tag pin unit, and a spring urging the detent in the forward direction.
The cost of manufacturing this tag attacher provided with a tag pin unit feed means in which a large number of parts are thus combined becomes high as a matter of course. In addition, attention has to be paid thoroughly to the handling of the tag attacher since it is a precision apparatus. Moreover, a lot of parts are worn during the use of the tag attacher, and errors occur in the movements of the parts, the movement of each part lacking smoothness to cause a tag pin to be driven erroneously in some cases.
The present invention aims at providing a tag attacher capable of eliminating the drawbacks encountered in the above-described conventional tag attacher, i.e. a tagging gun, and having a high durability and free from errors in tag pin driving actions owing to the use of a very simplified feed means.